KAMO Newsletter for June, 2018

Hello friends,

This is KAMO President Mark Walters with my section of the KAMO Newsletter.

In early June I spent the weekend camping on Castle Rock Lake with mentors and kids from the Baraboo River Chapter of KAMO. This get-together was a lot of organizing work for the BRC but it was incredibly successful. In all of KAMO’s calendar year the only thing bigger or better than chapter camping trips is The Joe which is pretty much a camping and hunting trip in which all chapters are invited.

Mike Brown has been dissecting and perfecting the website and has learned what is read by most viewers and has asked me to have the web person from each chapter to call him. This is very important to Mike as it is where viewers are going on each chapters page and how much time they are spending on that section. I ask that each chapter makes sure at your July meeting that this is brought up and you could even call Mike from your meeting.

I have been away from home for much of the last two months but am now going to start to focus on what can be done to help the Marsh/Point chapter and have had four people contact me from that chapter. It will be a long process but one current member would like to hold the meetings at her church in Marshfield where they have a fire pit. I like this idea and have a lot of thinking to do on how much time I can put into it and how to tackle the job. My daughter is a senior this year and in reality that is a big priority for me, if anyone else can help, I sure would appreciate it

KAMO is a constant challenge, we all know that, but the rewards and the groundwork we are accomplishing for the future of our youth make the challenges and time involved well worth it.

As always, thank you for everything that you do for KAMO!

Mark

KAMO Outdoor Mentoring Tip of the Month:

As a person that has endured hundreds of sunburns in my 56-years of walking this earth and the last fifteen years with the effects of skin cancer episodes, I think it is important to focus this month on intelligent sun protection. It is as simple as this, wear a wide brimmed hat, a shirt with at least elbow length sleeves and always use sunscreen with an SPF of at least 50.

Follow this simple test. Go outside with a wide brimmed hat on for ten minutes during the heat of the day. Now take the hat off for ten minutes. You will immediatly see how much hotter you are without the hat.

Without intelligent prevention for yourself or your children there is a solid chance that down the road you are in the least going to be spending money and have the scars to prove it for the sun exposure that you receive, especially during the time of 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m when the sun is the most intense.

A more dramatic end to lack of sun prevention is melanoma which is extremely deadly: “think before you burn”.

I promise to be fun next month.

Tip offered by Mark Walters

KAMOKIDS.ORG Report

It has been easy going running the website since it has been here. If you have designs on putting something on there, please let me know if I can help. The past month, the site has been visited 236 times with the Baraboo Chapter getting solid views of their page. The newsletter was read 20 times. Over time, I would predict these numbers to increase.

Submitted by Mike Brown

News from the Baraboo River Chapter:

The Baraboo River chapter met at the home of Kevin Seymour for its meeting, as Wisconsin Dells is much too busy during the summer months to have accommodating room at our normal location. We discussed the DMAP event that took place on the property of one of our JOE HUNT land owners. We had kids and mentors from 3 different chapters involved with the splitting and stacking of 2-3 cords of wood from trees harvested on the property. This was a great way for KAMO to give back to a land owner who has been so generous to our organization and it also was a good marketing tool for the DNR and the DMAP program. We also talked about our camping trip that took place at Juneau County Park, where we had 10 kids join us for the weekend. Although we had a couple periods of rain, it didn’t dampen our spirits. We had a great time and of course with chef AJ we also had some tasty food as well. We are planning on moving our future camping weekend to July or August to hopefully allow more people from other chapters participate. We will be doing a fundraiser at Reedsburg’s Party In The Park on July 28th by selling food and promoting KAMO. Our next meeting is at Kevin’s house on July 9.
Tradition Forward!

Submitted by Rick Miotke

News from the Coulee Chapter:

Our June 2nd fishing day on Lake Onalaska was held off Mosey Park on the north shore. We took out 3 pontoons. There were nine mentors and 16 family participants. It was a tough fishing day, but wonderful event with the kids playing a fish casting game and getting new t-shirts and poles. A meal was served in the picnic area.
We have been doing ?fishing by request? outings to kamo families, the Big Brothers/ Sisters, and the general public. This is a popular offering that the mentors enjoy and is great for public relations and bringing awareness to our group.

We had a table at the West Salem Rod and Gun Club Kids Day on June 16th. . Game calls and wildlife exhibits were featured. We are headed for Mc Mullen Park on Saturday, June 23rd for a clean up trail and painting picnic table project. This event was set up by a local high school student as her senior exit project. We use the campgrounds for free and this is our way of paying that back.

We are discovering that local businesses often have volunteer programs for their employees to help groups like ours. Harris Bank requested some volunteer work from us and is sending several of their employees to support us in our assistance of the U.W.-La Crosse Mississippi River Summer Camp for kids on the afternoon of July 17th. Without these volunteers from businesses and the colleges, we simply wouldn?t be able to do the bigger projects we take on.

We scheduled our pontoon rides on the Black River also on July 17th to coincide with the kids day and will have 11 pontoons providing rides to the kids from this camp and the staff working with them, plus the general public.

The DNR is going to do their goose banding surveys in this region between now and the end of the month and some of our mentors get involved with this and often take kids.

Submitted by Mike Brown

News from the Indianhead Chapter:

We tested out our pontoon boat and it worked well; bigger problem is Jim?s 1984 Ford F150 which pulled it, but it worked this time.

Steve went to the Quetico and Floyd to Boundary waters in June. We?ll likely help with the Chinese connection again this July with pontoon fishing again; kids? favorite activity last year.

We are lining up volunteers to help with our work day at the Mardi Gras on July 22.

Submitted by Jim Kurz

No News from the Lake Wisconsin Chapter, though we know they have been active with the wood cutting and joint camp with the Baraboo river Chapter.

News from the MarshPoint Chapter: See Marks section concerning this chapter.

News from the Meadow Valley Chapter:

We had 6 members present at our June meeting. Activities for the month included an air rifle demonstration and shooting for the kids. We had 4 stations set up with a total of 6 different air rifles. We were able to get 5 kids to participate in the evening event. Many thanks to Bill Dickenson who put in time setting the stations and targets up, bringing all of his air rifles, donating the ammunition and sharing his knowledge about air rifles to both the adults and kids.

We had two turkey hunting mentoring activities for the month. Thanks to Tom St.Clair and Janine Bigalke for taking the time to mentor.

Future activities/events discussed were:

Lemonweir river canoe trip

Submitted by Bob Nicksic

News from the Northwoods Chapter:
Meeting June 20th…

Long meeting, not a lot to tell. Plans and assignments made for upcoming Kids Hooked on Fishing outing, July 14th.
Received a sizable donation from the Lady Riders motorcycle organization in Iron Mt. Should be enough to cover all costs for the fishing outing…much appreciated.
Helped with an upcoming Girl Scout overnight by lending them twenty four poles.
Hoping they come back in somewhat usable shape.
Senior outing, storage trailer, and website also discussed.
No meeting in July.
That’s all we got…
Mick Mlnar Northwoods Chapter